The Democracy We Deserve
The Armed Forces (Parliamentary Approval for
Participation in Armed Conflict) Bill had its second reading on 21st
October. Clare Short’s proposal for a
mandatory vote in the Commons before going to war would not be needed in other
modern democracies, though it appears to be regarded as pretty radical in
Sadly, the
Leader of the House is no longer Robin Cook, whose recent death has deprived
the House of a moderate voice, one that would have given strong support to this
Bill, and instead we have Geoff Hoon.
Cook would certainly have allowed a vote at the end, whereas Hoon used
his position to talk out the Bill.
In the first place, and critically,
not enough MPs bothered to turn up. A
Friday morning, a time reserved for private members' Bills, is usually regarded
as time out for MPs. A minimum of 100
was needed to vote in favour, to ensure the passage of the Bill to committee
stage. This was a bill on perhaps the most important subject possible, the question
of committing the country to war! It was
also about democracy, of course - about the need for our representatives to
have a say, rather than leaving decisions of war and peace to be made by the
Executive (or, in the case of modern Britain, to the prime minister alone).
The quality of the debate itself
was generally good. There were
impassioned speeches, pointing out that of modern democracies Britain alone had
no requirement for a full parliamentary debate before going to war. The anachronistic nature of the royal
prerogative, the fact that parliament was not informed of the full legal
opinion on the Iraq war (which this Bill would make mandatory), the way in
which parliament had been deceived by the leadership on the Iraq war, the
improvement in democracy that the Bill would bring, all these points were
forcefully made.
The idea behind Clare Short’s Bill
was to curb executive power, bring some of the important decision-making down
to the floor of the Commons where, in democratic theory, it properly
belongs. The pro-democracy NGO Charter
88 strongly espoused the cause, with more than 1,000 activists writing
to their MPs to plead that they attend the debate, and, of course, vote for the
Bill. From its anti-war perspective CND
also took up the cause – both anti-war and pro-democrats fought side by side, a
truly harmonious combination. The
result? The depressing turnout. Not even
sponsors of the Bill, such as Ken Clarke and William Hague, turned up. Gordon Brown, in a pre-election interview in
the Daily Telegraph, promised firmly that if elected Labour would get rid of
the royal prerogative. Probably this was
said to allay fears, generated by the Iraq war, that the public would perceive
the executive as out of control, and withhold their Labour vote. (See: Brown:
I would give MPs the last word on war. 30th April, ’05.) Safely elected, Gordon Brown did not even
attend the debate.
Opportunities to improve democracy
do not come along often. As Menzies
Campbell, Lib Dem spokesman for foreign affairs said: ‘Parliament missed a rare
opportunity to assert its authority over the executive’.
The reasons for the failure to
attend this most important occasion must be guessed at. One motive may be the one Hoon himself
mentioned: an unwillingness to give up a Friday, when only private members’ Bills
are to be heard, that has come to be regarded as a holiday. Another, and more likely, is that MPs were
afraid to stand up and be counted, to vote for the Bill (and so against the
entrenched executive), for the sake of their careers. They didn’t want to be regarded as having
joined the ‘awkward squad’. (Downing Street had made its opposition to the Bill
known.) These are motives, not sufficient excuses, of course. Blair and Howard
were absent, but somehow I expected Charles Kennedy to be there. However, a good number of Liberal Democrats
did attend.
During the debate, those arguing
against took the line that the Executive should be unfettered by the Commons so
as to act quickly and decisively. The
anachronistic royal prerogative, which the Bill sought to abolish in the case
of war, was actually defended by Hoon and others on the grounds that it
improved this necessary flexibility. One
MP, McDonagh, in support of her anti stand read out reams of letters from her
constituents verbatim, letters from servicemen and ex-servicemen, describing
the horrors of war. Though these were
the very people who would be the most likely beneficiaries of the Bill, which
was to curb unnecessary wars, not to make more of them, she somehow used them
as an argument to quash the Bill, along the lines of: These heroes are in the
front line, putting their lives at risk for their country, while you MPs are
sitting in your comfortable green armchairs discussing the matter! Confused?
The idea that MPs should argue
against devolving power to themselves at the expense of the executive, which
had so recently been the cause of a disastrous decision to go to war, is hard
to comprehend. Are they against
democracy itself, the form of social contract they are supposed to represent? And in favour of the rule of an oligarchy
picked by the prime minister? They
claimed that matters of national security are best left to the ruling clique,
the sort of decisions that must be taken behind closed doors ‘in the national
interest’ (a phrase dropped more than once). That is how state matters were
settled once upon a time, in Machiavelli’s day, but a democracy operates best
out in the open level plains. What need
for secrecy, for clandestine agreements, for behind-the-scenes actions taken in
our name of which we, if aware of them, would be ashamed? Does this seem terribly radical to you, dear
reader?
There was also much talk of
‘special forces’. These are armed forces
sent in early, before a conflict is declared, to prepare the ground and spy out
the proposed enemy’s defences. Their
status would be questionable, to say the least, if sent in by the executive
(allowed by the Bill in cases of emergency), and then parliament found that the
proposed war would be illegal. This was
actually an argument brought forward against the Bill! The vision of clandestine armed forces
deployed to soften up an enemy (none of the rubbish about the United Nations
here, by the way – this was good practical talk) roaming the globe in secret
‘in the national interest’, is of an anarchic world from which no progress has
been made since ancient times. No wonder
these speakers had decided to vote against more democracy!
Anyway, at the end, one MP (Hoon, the
Leader of the House), took advantage of his position to filibuster his way to
the end of the session despite interjections that he stop and allow another
vote, and that seemed to be that. However this cynical manoeuvre would surely
have been impossible if the Chamber had been better attended.
The working of parliament is rather arcane to ordinary members of the public, so I waited till the morning paper arrived next day for an explanation of what had actually happened to the Bill at last. Was it going to Committee after all, or had it really been defeated at this second reading by lack of numbers? Amazingly, the paper (The Guardian, generally recognised as a quality broadsheet) did not even mention the debate! Not even a letter was printed about it, though many must have been received. Worse, a good article by Matthew Tempest appeared on the Guardian Unlimited website only hours after the debate, headed Government kills Short’s War Bill. This was material that might have been expected to occupy the front page the next morning, but yet – nothing! Nothing also in the Observer the following morning. So we have recorded so much for you, dear reader, as you probably won’t have read it anywhere else. H.D